Very interesting article, Paul. Clearly the way we do urban/suburban sprawl in the US and China is terrible for the planet. Do you have any sense of how these effects might be different for ultra dense but modern and green cities like Tokyo and Singapore that have ubiquitous mass transit, electric cars, and comparatively fewer people drive (especially gas)? These also harness solar effectively and often mix in green spaces and use design techniques to blunt the heat from buildings and pavement. I’m wondering if there is potential for well-designed urban planning to mitigate or have a net positive effect if done right
Eric, thanks for your comment. I have to confess ignorance on the ways Singapore and Tokyo handle growth and sprawl. Clearly, the laws and policies that we have the the U.S., which promote sprawl by for example devaluing farmland in favor of development. Here in San Diego, where I live, we have more farms than and other county in the U.S. That is being threatened always by development pressure.
And yes, there are lots of ways of mitigating the heat island effect: green roofing, reflective paving and building surfaces, urban greenery, etc. In my view, they go hand -in-hand mitigating sprawl should come first; then let's work on cooling our cities.
The even greater tragedy is that a good deal of sprawl in China was built on speculation and hardly anyone lives in these “ghost cities.” They paved paradise for nothing.
J.E., good point! As with China, there are now vast wastelands south of where I live, in Tijuana, that are empty and abandoned maquiladoras, left behind when manufacturing became cheaper in Cambodia and Nicaragua.
Very interesting article, Paul. Clearly the way we do urban/suburban sprawl in the US and China is terrible for the planet. Do you have any sense of how these effects might be different for ultra dense but modern and green cities like Tokyo and Singapore that have ubiquitous mass transit, electric cars, and comparatively fewer people drive (especially gas)? These also harness solar effectively and often mix in green spaces and use design techniques to blunt the heat from buildings and pavement. I’m wondering if there is potential for well-designed urban planning to mitigate or have a net positive effect if done right
Eric, thanks for your comment. I have to confess ignorance on the ways Singapore and Tokyo handle growth and sprawl. Clearly, the laws and policies that we have the the U.S., which promote sprawl by for example devaluing farmland in favor of development. Here in San Diego, where I live, we have more farms than and other county in the U.S. That is being threatened always by development pressure.
And yes, there are lots of ways of mitigating the heat island effect: green roofing, reflective paving and building surfaces, urban greenery, etc. In my view, they go hand -in-hand mitigating sprawl should come first; then let's work on cooling our cities.
The even greater tragedy is that a good deal of sprawl in China was built on speculation and hardly anyone lives in these “ghost cities.” They paved paradise for nothing.
J.E., good point! As with China, there are now vast wastelands south of where I live, in Tijuana, that are empty and abandoned maquiladoras, left behind when manufacturing became cheaper in Cambodia and Nicaragua.